CBS Promotes Biased Poll on Obama Anti-Conscience Mandate

CBS News is coming under fire for conducting and promoting a biased poll on the question of Obama’s new mandate that requires religious groups to pay for insurance coverage for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.

The CBS News poll is at odds with two other surveys showing a majority or plurality of Americans believe religious organizations and employers should have the right to refuse to provide coverage for birth control and abortion-causing drugs that violate their religious or moral views. That’s because CBS never mentioned that the employers have a conscientious objection to the coverage.

As Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner points out, CBS asked the following polling question: “And what about for religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university- do you support or oppose a recent federal requirement that their health insurance plans cover the full cost of birth control for their female employees?”

The result showed 61 percent of Americans support Obama’s mandate compared with 31 percent opposed.

That differs from a recent Rasmussen survey LifeNews covered which asked: “he requirement to provide contraceptives for women violates deeply held beliefs of some churches and religious organizations. If providing such coverage violates the beliefs of a church or religious organization, should the government still require them to provide coverage for contraceptives?”

In that survey, 50 percent of Americans polled said the federal government should provide a religious exemption not found in the Obama mandate compared with 39 percent who said otherwise.

The CBS News poll results also differ, as Carroll indicates, from a recent Pew poll asking, “Should religiously-affiliated institutions that object to the use of contraceptives be given an exemption from this rule, or should they be required to cover contraceptives like other employers?” That survey showed 49 percent of Americans essentially opposed the mandate and supported a religious exemption while 44 percent said religious employers should be forced to cover the birth control and controversial abortifacient drugs.

“The CBS/New York Times poll never mentioned that religious institutions might object to the mandate, the Rasmussen and Pew polls did,” Carroll writes. “That seems to explain why the CBS/NYT poll is such an outlier.”

The press conference comes as the U.S. Senate is expected to vote soon, possibly as early as today, on an amendment that would stop the mandate President Barack Obama put in place to force religious groups to pay for insurance coverage that includes birth control and abortion-causing drugs.

Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.

Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.

Congress will do what it can to fight back, starting this week, as pro-life Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, puts together a hearing on conscience rights.

“If this is what the President is willing to do in a tough election year, imagine what he will do in implementing the rest of his health care law after the election,” Issa said.

Leading pro-life groups, including Americans United for Life, are urging support for the Amendment, which could be added to another piece of legislation.

“The Obama Administration continued its unprecedented attack on Americans’ freedom of conscience by refusing to reverse its mandate that nearly all insurance plans must provide full coverage of all Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved “contraception,” including the abortion-inducing drug ella,” the organization said in an action alert to its members. “We must urge the Senate to protect Americans’ freedom of conscience by supporting Amendment #1520, which would protect the right to provide, purchase, or enroll in healthcare coverage that is consistent with one’s religious beliefs and moral convictions.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.

Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.

Bishops across the country have spoken out against the original mandate and are considering a lawsuit against it — with bishops in more than 164 locations across the United States issuing public statements against it or having letters opposing it printed in diocesan newspaper or read from the pulpit.

“We cannot — we will not comply with this unjust law,” said the letter from Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”

The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”

The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.

The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.

The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.